Verb similarity: comparing corpus and psycholinguistic data

Similarity, which plays a key role in fields like cognitive science, psycholinguistics and natural language processing, is a broad and multifaceted concept. In this work we analyse how two approaches that belong to different perspectives, the corpus view and the psycholinguistic view, articulate similarity between verb senses in Spanish. Specifically, we compare the similarity between verb senses based on their argument structure, which is captured through semantic roles, with their similarity defined by word associations. We address the question of whether verb argument structure, which reflects the expression of the events, and word associations, which are related to the speakers' organization of the mental lexicon, shape similarity between verbs in a congruent manner, a topic which has not been explored previously. While we find significant correlations between verb sense similarities obtained from these two approaches, our findings also highlight some discrepancies between them and the importance of the degree of abstraction of the corpus annotation and psycholinguistic representations.La similitud, que desempeña un papel clave en campos como la ciencia cognitiva, la psicolingüística y el procesamiento del lenguaje natural, es un concepto amplio y multifacético. En este trabajo analizamos cómo dos enfoques que pertenecen a diferentes perspectivas, la visión del corpus y la visión psicolingüística, articulan la semejanza entre los sentidos verbales en español. Específicamente, comparamos la similitud entre los sentidos verbales basados en su estructura argumental, que se capta a través de roles semánticos, con su similitud definida por las asociaciones de palabras. Abordamos la cuestión de si la estructura del argumento verbal, que refleja la expresión de los acontecimientos, y las asociaciones de palabras, que están relacionadas con la organización de los hablantes del léxico mental, forman similitud entre los verbos de una manera congruente, un tema que no ha sido explorado previamente. Mientras que encontramos correlaciones significativas entre las similitudes de los sentidos verbales obtenidas de estos dos enfoques, nuestros hallazgos también resaltan algunas discrepancias entre ellos y la importancia del grado de abstracción de la anotación del corpus y las representaciones psicolingüísticas.La similitud, que exerceix un paper clau en camps com la ciència cognitiva, la psicolingüística i el processament del llenguatge natural, és un concepte ampli i multifacètic. En aquest treball analitzem com dos enfocaments que pertanyen a diferents perspectives, la visió del corpus i la visió psicolingüística, articulen la semblança entre els sentits verbals en espanyol. Específicament, comparem la similitud entre els sentits verbals basats en la seva estructura argumental, que es capta a través de rols semàntics, amb la seva similitud definida per les associacions de paraules. Abordem la qüestió de si l'estructura de l'argument verbal, que reflecteix l'expressió dels esdeveniments, i les associacions de paraules, que estan relacionades amb l'organització dels parlants del lèxic mental, formen similitud entre els verbs d'una manera congruent, un tema que no ha estat explorat prèviament. Mentre que trobem correlacions significatives entre les similituds dels sentits verbals obtingudes d'aquests dos enfocaments, les nostres troballes també ressalten algunes discrepàncies entre ells i la importància del grau d'abstracció de l'anotació del corpus i les representacions psicolingüístiques

Lexical information from a minimalist point of view

Simplicity as a methodological orientation applies to linguistic theory just as to any other field of research: ‘Occam’s razor’ is the label for the basic heuristic maxim according to which an adequate analysis must ultimately be reduced to indispensible specifications. In this sense, conceptual economy has been a strict and stimulating guideline in the development of Generative Grammar from the very beginning. Halle’s (1959) argument discarding the level of taxonomic phonemics in order to unify two otherwise separate phonological processes is an early characteristic example; a more general notion is that of an evaluation metric introduced in Chomsky (1957, 1975), which relates the relative simplicity of alternative linguistic descriptions systematically to the quest for explanatory adequacy of the theory underlying the descriptions to be evaluated. Further proposals along these lines include the theory of markedness developed in Chomsky and Halle (1968), Kean (1975, 1981), and others, the notion of underspecification proposed e.g. in Archangeli (1984), Farkas (1990), the concept of default values and related notions. An important step promoting this general orientation was the idea of Principles and Parameters developed in Chomsky (1981, 1986), which reduced the notion of language particular rule systems to universal principles, subject merely to parametrization with restricted options, largely related to properties of particular lexical items. On this account, the notion of a simplicity metric is to be dispensed with, as competing analyses of relevant data are now supposed to be essentially excluded by the restrictive system of principles

Paracompositionality, MWEs and Argument Substitution

Multi-word expressions, verb-particle constructions, idiomatically combining phrases, and phrasal idioms have something in common: not all of their elements contribute to the argument structure of the predicate implicated by the expression. Radically lexicalized theories of grammar that avoid string-, term-, logical form-, and tree-writing, and categorial grammars that avoid wrap operation, make predictions about the categories involved in verb-particles and phrasal idioms. They may require singleton types, which can only substitute for one value, not just for one kind of value. These types are asymmetric: they can be arguments only. They also narrowly constrain the kind of semantic value that can correspond to such syntactic categories. Idiomatically combining phrases do not subcategorize for singleton types, and they exploit another locally computable and compositional property of a correspondence, that every syntactic expression can project its head word. Such MWEs can be seen as empirically realized categorial possibilities, rather than lacuna in a theory of lexicalizable syntactic categories.Comment: accepted version (pre-final) for 23rd Formal Grammar Conference, August 2018, Sofi

Bootstrapping a Verb Lexicon for Biomedical Information Extraction

The accurate extraction of information from texts requires both syntactic and semantic resources. We are developing a verb dictionary for use in the processing of biomedical texts that includes both syntactic subcategorisation frames and semantic event frames, and links them together. In this paper, we describe the acquisition of syntactic subcategorisation frames from a large corpus of abstracts of the subject of E. Coli, together with the extraction of linguistic event frames from a subset of this corpus, in which the biological process of E. coli gene regulation has been linguistically annotated by a group of biologists. Finally, we report on work carried out to link the syntactic and semantic information together, by mapping syntactic arguments of subcategorisation frames to semantic arguments of the event frames

LexOnto: A Model for Ontology Lexicons for Ontology-based NLP

Cimiano P, Haase P, Herold M, Mantel M, Buitelaar P. LexOnto: A Model for Ontology Lexicons for Ontology-based NLP. In: Proceedings of the OntoLex07 Workshop held in conjunction with ISWC’07. 2007

Robust Processing of Natural Language

Previous approaches to robustness in natural language processing usually treat deviant input by relaxing grammatical constraints whenever a successful analysis cannot be provided by ``normal'' means. This schema implies, that error detection always comes prior to error handling, a behaviour which hardly can compete with its human model, where many erroneous situations are treated without even noticing them. The paper analyses the necessary preconditions for achieving a higher degree of robustness in natural language processing and suggests a quite different approach based on a procedure for structural disambiguation. It not only offers the possibility to cope with robustness issues in a more natural way but eventually might be suited to accommodate quite different aspects of robust behaviour within a single framework.Comment: 16 pages, LaTeX, uses pstricks.sty, pstricks.tex, pstricks.pro, pst-node.sty, pst-node.tex, pst-node.pro. To appear in: Proc. KI-95, 19th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Bielefeld (Germany), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer 199

Verb similarity: Comparing corpus and psycholinguistic data

Similarity, which plays a key role in fields like cognitive science, psycholinguistics and natural language processing, is a broad and multifaceted concept. In this work we analyse how two approaches that belong to different perspectives, the corpus view and the psycholinguistic view, articulate similarity between verb senses in Spanish. Specifically, we compare the similarity between verb senses based on their argument structure, which is captured through semantic roles, with their similarity defined by word associations. We address the question of whether verb argument structure, which reflects the expression of the events, and word associations, which are related to the speakers' organization of the mental lexicon, shape similarity between verbs in a congruent manner, a topic which has not been explored previously. While we find significant correlations between verb sense similarities obtained from these two approaches, our findings also highlight some discrepancies between them and the importance of the degree of abstraction of the corpus annotation and psycholinguistic representations

D6.1: Technologies and Tools for Lexical Acquisition

This report describes the technologies and tools to be used for Lexical Acquisition in PANACEA. It includes descriptions of existing technologies and tools which can be built on and improved within PANACEA, as well as of new technologies and tools to be developed and integrated in PANACEA platform. The report also specifies the Lexical Resources to be produced. Four main areas of lexical acquisition are included: Subcategorization frames (SCFs), Selectional Preferences (SPs), Lexical-semantic Classes (LCs), for both nouns and verbs, and Multi-Word Expressions (MWEs)